Beacon Street Diary

The Story of Niijima Jo

Every year, usually toward the end of the spring term, the Reading Room in the Congregational Library suddenly fills with middle-school students from Japan. Their visit is as orderly as could be expected from ninety adolescents, (in three groups of thirty) far away from their homes back in Kyoto. They mill around, whisper, and point, and then under the teacher's urging, a small group steps forward, usually with gifts in hand, and a short speech memorized in English: "Thank you for sending Joseph Neesima and Christianity to Japan."

We are all together in that Reading Room because of one special person.

Niijima Jo came to Boston in 1865, a young man from a samurai family (minor aristocrats, in other words) at a time when Japan was slowly and painfully opening its doors to Western culture. Over two centuries of forced seclusion ended in 1853 when Admiral Matthew Perry sailed his ships into Tokugawa Harbor — and with him a flow of western technology, ideas, and trade goods. But in 1864 leaving Japan without government permission was still illegal, and not for the faint of heart.

Niijima Jo was ambitious, well-educated, and he was anxious to see the world beyond the shores of Japan. In 1864 he persuaded an American ship captain to take him to Hong Kong, where he found another ship. The owner of the ship Alphaeus Hardy, would change his life forever. Captain Hardy, as it turns out, was a member of the Old South Church in Boston, and with his help Niijima Jo (who named himself Joseph Hardy Neesima in honor of his American friend) got the education he longed for and more. He attended the Phillips Andover Academy, Amherst College, and Andover Seminary — in every case the first Japanese to earn a degree. In 1874 he gathered another first when he was ordained as a Congregational minister.

By then the young man was becoming restless. Japan had changed a great deal in the ten years since he had left, and its new Meiji government was determined to catch up with — and surpass — the west in learning, technology, and military power. The time was right to return to Kyoto, but now with the backing of the Congregational mission board, and to fulfill a long-term dream.

The Doshisha University was established in 1875 as a "one-purpose school," its mission to bring the best of western scholarship and Christianity to Japan. The goal was, in Niijima's words, to raise up "Christian statesmen, Christian lawyers, Christian editors, and Christian merchants, as well as Christian preachers and teachers." Christians, Niijima insisted, should not be "ignoramuses".

Today Doshisha is one of Japan's most prestigious universities, with over 26,000 undergraduate and some 3,000 graduate students. Its guiding philosophy of "conscience education" embraces intellectual, as well as moral and physical strength. It was Niijima's dream to have a fully integrated educational system, offering schooling from kindergarten through graduate school. The Doshisha Elementary School, which opened in 2005, is a realization of that ambition. The students who come to visit us, then, are special, connected to us by a long history and shared ideals. It's always wonderful to welcome them back to a building and a library that Niijima Jo would have known, and treasured as we do today.

-Peggy

Our new book cradle

A little over six months ago, I began searching for the perfect book cradle that would hold large bound newspapers. We have a number of those here that have never been microfilmed nor digitized including issues of the Congregationalist and the Herald of Gospel Liberty. They are awkward to handle and our foam adjustable book cradle pieces never seem to provide the right amount of support and angle for easy reading. Sometimes, researchers laid them flat on the table and stood to read them. One of our directors and frequent researchers, Rick Taylor, was very interested in having the library obtain this type of book cradle that would adjust to various angles for reading while sitting. After spending hours looking through websites and catalogs, I had come to the realization that this was not a common library furnishing. Then serendipity stepped in, I was watching a video produced by the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) in Worcester and caught a glimpse of what looked like a book cradle that would meet our needs. Our Archivist, Jessica Steytler, had arranged to visit AAS while on a trip to Worcester to present a records management workshop and agreed to look for this item and photograph it.

On her return, Jessica confirmed that AAS did have a book cradle for large newspapers, they had had it custom built for them, and the curator was willing to provide us with the dimensions to have one built. The next challenge was to locate a carpenter to build one for us. We contacted the North Bennett Street School here in Boston and were given the names of recent graduates. Alta Tarala was selected after submitting a proposal and cost estimate.

board members try out our new book cradle

The book cradle was completed in time for our Annual Board meeting on June 3. We thank Richard Taylor, Marjorie Royle, and Douglas Taylor for their financial gifts that made this possible. The book cradle is available for use in our Reading Room by all researchers reading these large bound volumes.

-Claudette

Schedule notice -- Reading Room closed on Monday

Our reading room will be closed on Monday, June 3rd for our board's annual meeting. Staff will be on hand to answer questions by phone or email, and all of our online resources will be available as usual.

Schedule notice -- closed for Memorial Day

The Congregational Library will be closed on Monday, May 27th in observance of Memorial Day.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have questions for the staff, please send an email, leave a voicemail, or use our website's contact form, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office next week.

How far we've come

This is our 1,000th blog post!

It's been a little more than seven years since Jessica started writing here in Febrary 2006. Back then, we had just started adding records to our online catalog. It now contains over 88,000 item records for books, pamphlets, periodicals, archival collections, images, and objects, with more being added every day. We had a hand-coded website. (How many of you remember the purple pages?) Since then, we have redesigned our site twice and are in the middle of doing so again. We now have a dedicated exhibit site, and our online presence has expanded to include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr.

Six years ago, we launched our Brown Bag Lunch lecture series, awarded our first joint research fellowship with our neighbors at the Boston Athenaeum, and initiated a church records microfilming preservation project.

Five years ago, we added our e-newsletter, and expanded our educational programs to include Peggy's popular Growing Deeper Roots course on Congregational history. When we launched the current incarnation of our website, we added a database of citations for clergy and missionary obituaries that has proven immensely useful.

Four years ago, we digitized early Congregational yearbooks, John Vinton's collection of missionary biographies, and Harold Worthley's inventory of Massachusetts Congregational church records with the help of the scanning lab at the Boston Public Library and the Internet Archive.

Three years ago, we hosted a conference in celebration of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions' bicentennial. We also launched the exclusive member content on our website, and started uploading pictures from our image collection to Flickr.

Two years ago, we joined in the celebrations for the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, added our first records to the Digital Commonwealth catalog, and launched our first digital exhibits.

Last year, we vicariously traveled through England with some of our board members, and made the first collections in our New England's Hidden Histories program available for use online.

Over the years, staff members have come and gone. We have nurtured dozens of interns and student volunteers through their first archival processing projects or cataloging experiences. As we have learned about useful resources and interesting events at other institutions, we've done our part to help promote them.

It has been quite a journey so far, and we will have even more exciting things to share with you in the coming years. We hope you'll come along for the ride.

Successful reference

A patron sent a picture of this gorgeous church out in rural Wisconsin. The cheerfulness of the day that our patron, Major, captured and the charming quality of the church encourages a bit of the backstory of why he sent the photo.

Major emailed me initially to get help getting a copy of his ancestor's obituary notice, which is in our "Find a Congregationalist" (aka Necrology) database. The Yearbook that the Rev. Stevens was listed in was available online through the Internet Archive. That success lead to questions about whatever happened to the church and the graveyard that Stevens served? I was able to confirm there was only one church in the area he could have been at, that it had closed, and the local town or county office might help direct to their locations. Finally, some many days later, Major wrote one more time, to report a complete success: the church and graveyard are still in excellent condition. He was able to visit and find out a bit more about his ancestor. He found out on this first trip that there's a Civil War museum in the church basement now and the sexton maintains the original ledger book. Major got confirmation about Rev. Stevens's presence, plus a portrait of the gentleman is still on hand. He had the satisfaction of some mysteries solved. I had the satisfaction of knowing that I helped direct him to the answers. Thank you for that.

-Jessica

Schedule notice -- closed today

The library is closed today in compliance with the governor's shelter-in-place order.

We hope all of our neighbors are safe and well.

Schedule notice -- Reading Room closed on Thursday

Our reading room will be closed to the public on Thursday, April 18th from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm for a meeting of the Advisory Circle, our friends of the library group.

Staff will be on hand to answer questions by phone or email, and all of our online resources will be available as usual.

Schedule notice -- closed for Patriots' Day

The Congregational Library will be closed on Monday, April 15th in observance of Patriots' Day.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have questions for the staff, please send an email, leave a voicemail, or use our website's contact form, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office next week.

We wish the best of luck to everyone participating in the 117th Boston Marathon.

 

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photo of the Lexington Minute Men relief (1948) by Bashka Paeff courtesy of user Daderot via Wikimedia Commons, released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

New England Regional Fellowship Consortium

We are very proud to announce that the Congregational Library will be joining the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, a collaboration of cultural agencies managed by the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The NERFC awards eight-week research grants for scholars to study at its member institutions. Because of its granting schedule, we won't be hosting researchers sponsored by the Consortium this coming year. That means you have plenty of time to put together your application for the 2014-15 cycle before the February deadline. Proposal requirements can be found on the MHS website.